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What If Oracle Bought Sun Microsystems?

Posted by timothy on from the ask-the-oracle dept.

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister believes Oracle is next in line to make a play for Sun now that IBM has withdrawn its offer. Dismissing server market arguments in favor of Cisco or Dell as suitors, McAllister suggests that MySQL, ZFS, DTrace, and Java make Sun an even better asset to Oracle than to IBM. MySQL as a complement to Oracle's existing database business would make sense, given Oracle's 2005 purchase of Innobase, and with 'the long history of Oracle databases on Solaris servers, it might actually see owning Solaris as an asset,' McAllister writes. But the 'crown jewel' of the deal would be Java. 'It's almost impossible to overestimate the importance of Java to Oracle. Java has become the backbone of Oracle's middleware strategy,' McAllister contends."

8 of 237 comments (clear)

  1. Yahoo! + Sun by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I say Yahoo and sun should merge. Just think about it, 1. Yahoo makes some cool cloud offerings, 2.sun builds the cloud. 3. ?????? 4. Profits

    1. Re:Yahoo! + Sun by Ethanol-fueled · · Score: 5, Insightful
      No, I hope you're joking. Sun's bundling Yahoo Toolbar with java is bad enough. If Oracle were to buy Sun, it would be in their best interests to stop that immediately unless they don't want to be taken seriously. Choice rant from the link:

      I find it insulting when applications bundle unrelated crapware like browser toolbars, particularly when the installation selects the extra junk by default...

      ...software upgrades need to be elegant and streamlined. Bundling in a browser toolbar cheapens the whole experience because it starts looking just like so many other crapware applications that plague the PC industry.

  2. Am I the only one? by More_Cowbell · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Am I the only one that hopes Sun changes it's mind about selling itself and succeeds on its own? I know they have made some big strategic errors that have gotten them where they are now, but it is a solid company (imho) with, from what I've seen, superior products. Grossly undervalued for some time now.

    --
    Experience teaches only the teachable. -AH
    1. Re:Am I the only one? by blind+biker · · Score: 5, Interesting

      NO, absolutely not the only one - that's my hope as well. But the truth is, Sun is a company that gave a lot to the world in which it exists, and monetized very little of it. It's the greatest open source contributor (Solaris, Java, OpenOffice, the SPARC architecture itself, NetBeans, ZFS... and I'm sure missing some, as Sun gave away HUGE amounts of stuff).

      Such companies don't usually succeed in a commercial sense. I'm tempted to say that Sun should cease to be a for-profit publicly traded company, and become either a state-sponsored institution, or private foundation, for the development of high-tech.

      --
      "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
    2. Re:Am I the only one? by goltzc · · Score: 5, Funny

      I find your ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

      --
      Our bugs are smarter than your test scripts.
  3. Re:Strange Database Merge... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So what's left of the database market if Oracle and Sun merged together?

    I don't see anything changing. Right now we have a 3-way fight between three heavyweights: Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft. Everyone else is unimportant.

    However, IBM and Microsoft have other competencies and sources of revenue. Oracle does not. In result, Oracle has been looking for new ways to enter the low-end market. So owning MySQL could be a boon for them, but it wouldn't significantly change the market.

    --
    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
  4. A Strategic Solution by Hangtime · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If they could both bury the hatchet for about 5 minutes, a joint bid by Oracle and IBM would actually make much more sense. IBM would take the Solaris platform and hardware, Oracle would take the ZFS, MySQL, and DTrace. They could then both jointly purchase and spin-off Java into an Open Source project or its own firm with each company taking a stake. Since both rely so heavily on Java and neither would enjoy the other firm owning the platform it makes perfect sense for it to continue as an independent entity.

  5. Re:What direction will Oracle take Java? by timeOday · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Show me a developer who doesn't think everybody else's code is crap.